Fresh Thinking

Fresh Thinking

Bio-Viewpoints: A Day in The Life Sciences

The Game-Changing Role of Biomarkers in Personalized Medicine

Lessons for Healthcare Innovators

One size has never fit all in oncology, but new discoveries about the biology of cancer, and about anti-tumor therapies that disrupt cancer, are making personalized treatment both a new paradigm and a new imperative.

The problem of selecting the best therapy for an individual patient has been most evident in oncology, where treatment regimens are often toxic and expensive, and may benefit only some patients. But the problem isn’t limited to oncology. There are individual differences in responses to anticoagulants and antiretroviral therapies, to name a few. For that matter, some patients with certain diseases don’t need to be treated at all, such as patients with low-risk subtypes of prostate cancer who are far more likely to die with their disease than from it...